The martyrdom of man, (1872)(Books Google full view of text) by Winwood Reade (1833-1875, buried 51.567, -1.086) was an important book to the adolescent development of several of the most celebrated people of the early 20th century. Winston Churchill claimed it and so did Arthur Conan Doyle and Cecil Rhodes, therefore it seemed like an important book for me to read. It’s a longish book at 543 pages and sometimes wanderingly verbose commentary on civilization and the precise historical accuracy can occasionally be contested but it is obvious when reading it why those late Victorian men valued it so highly. It is an adventure story of history aimed at non-conformist young men who have a lust to change the history of the world themselves. It is an overview of advice to adventurers rather similar to Machiavelli‘s, History of Florence.

If your goal is to rule the world this is a good book to read but not so much for others because it might change you.

This blog has posted unequivocal clues pointing to the identity of Jack the Ripper for several months. No one has come forth with his name so having said the name time and again in very thinly disguised code here it is in plain text. Jack the Ripper was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. There I have said it publicly on the internet for everyone to see. With that simple revelation you can now easily decipher why each of the clues point to one and only one person, Conan Doyle.

On April 15, 2009 I wrote, … I am going to go sort of slow on these clues to the identity of Jack, about one a week or so, because they are so obvious that once you see them there isn’t much of a game anymore. It is going to be all of the usual stuff, it’s just that once you know what clues to look for Jack’s identity becomes glaringly obvious. By the way his name is NOT on the usual list of suspects. That will soon be upgraded.

There may be more representations of the fictional character portrayed below than any other fictional character except perhaps Dracula. More on that later. For our Christmas present 2009 Hollywood is about to have yet another screen representation of his quirky sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

HOMELESS A SUSPICIOUS CHARACTER

WITH THE VIGILANCE COMMITTE IN THE EAST-END

Published 13 Oct 1888 Illustrated London News

Jack the Ripper pursued by Sherlock Holmes and Dr. James Watson
Here it is spelled out for you in the Illustrated London News three weeks before Mary Kelly’s murder. Homeless = Holmes S or would you prefer a picture of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. James Watson printed in the newspaper with his name under the picture? There he is, Sherlock in his iconic deerstalker hat and his companion Watson in his bowler hat. The picture above was published before they would be recognized by the public even by Doyle’s own graphic artists which at that time did the picture seen below. Without the magnifying glass up to his eye and the word Rache Sherlock would be unrecognizable. Notice he isn’t in a deerstalker cap but the cape seen in both pictures precedes other superheros by decades.

Do you recognise the 1888 image of Sherlock Holmes?

Why is Jack the Ripper still famous? This seems like a foolish question until you think about for a minute. Once the Ripperologists start thinking clearly about the clues it becomes obvious who this very unusual person had to be. Here it is more than one hundred and twenty years after his murders and yet, Jack the Ripper is still famous. That simple fact is very informative. Why? Because it is the sign of a world-class story-teller. There have been tens of millions of homicides, including military ones, since 1888 but we still remember these five individual murders. Why? Because they are interesting! That’s a clue because most murders are just tragic deaths and soon forgotten.

A photograph of the Jack the Ripper in the victim’s eye. Who in the world would come up with such a ludicrous suggestion for discovering a killer except for a very clever someone giving clues—a person whose first and last name both refer to the eye. Conan as in con to look—as in conning tower of an airport also to con means to fool someone. And secondly the name Doyle in the french language means of the eye. Perhaps someone who had published many articles about photography or perhaps a budding eye doctor with an eye magnifying glass would offer such a silly suggestion. Doyle fits all of these unusual clues.

Dear Boss – Jack the Ripper It is unchallengeable that with the publication of the Dear Boss letter this serial killer became known as Jack the Ripper. Therefore this is a critical clue.

Dear Boss letter – page 2

This letter is self-consciously challenging, funny, and cute. It is clear that the author wants to be known and respected and is seeking this rather desperate way to gain fame. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. Of course he didn’t want to be buckled or he would be executed for these crimes so he couldn’t sign his personal name. Or could he? Perhaps he could if he used a slight code — ha ha

The most famous words in this letter, Jack the Ripper, Dear Boss and ha ha, are his name slightly encoded in the beginning words and in the two concluding salutary closings. The name Jack the Ripper, easily converts into — Dr. Ignatius Arthur Conan Doyle’s name and title. It is the initial letters of his name Ignatius Arthur Conan Doyle, and the word Doctor. He rarely used the name Ignatius but it was on his birth certificate and he did attend a Jesuit school, founded by Saint Ignatius Loyola.

The English letters I and J are often interchangeable as in the spelling of John as Ian and thus his initials JAC becomes Ignatius Arthur Conan and The Ripper becomes D Ripper. The word the is pronounced and spelled d or de in most European languages and medical surgeons are sometimes jocularly called rippers.

Conan Doyle was a practicing medical doctor at the time of the Ripper murders and he goads the police with the post script, They say I’m a doctor now ha ha.

Doctor Conan Doyle – Licensed to kill – Letter to his mother upon his graduation from medical school

Licensed to kill, isn’t the letter most son’s would send to their mother upon graduating from medical school but it implies his rather unusual attitude towards homicide. It is found in, Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters p. 137.

The letter in red above is known as the Dear Boss letter and once you are looking for Arthur Conan Doyle’s name in the most prominent places it becomes easy to find. These clue words I am pointing out are not randomly chosen words but are the most famous and most prominent words in the letter.

Dear Boss = De as in of or by —ar as in Arthur — and Boss as in a lump a bump acondyle. Thus we have — by ar condyle = By Arthur Conan Doyle. The very first words in the letter is the well-known proper name of the sender of the letter and thus the self-proclaimed killer and so too is the nom de plume Jack the Ripper at the end, Conan Doyle’s public name’s initials and title.

Thus the two most well-known things about this letter are found to be Conan Doyle’s name slightly encoded. There are more, for example:

The concluding letters of the post script with the underlining, ha ha are also a signature by the author of this letter. They commemorate his famous political cartoonist grandfather who used the secret identity HB signed at the bottom of his drawings. John Doyle used these signature letters for decades without being identified. Except in this case the Doyle in question is named Arthur so instead of HB he used HA and for emphasis ha ha is a goading joke to the police!

Jack the Ripper had a chameleon personality. Today I want to emphasize that Jack had a chameleon like personality. He was able to compartmentalized his thoughts and behavior and to present the personality which suited his purpose at the moment. Therefore he was a consummate actor as well as being a cold-blooded killer and skilled butcher. London in late 1888 was in a state of panic about the previous murders and the helplessness of the police. Yet, even at this time when everyone, especially women at night, would be desperately cautious he had such highly developed acting abilities that he was able to lure women into a place where he could not only kill them but immediately butcher their dead bodies. It takes a very unusual person with unusual motives to do all of those things and do them well. One curious item was that not only did Jack do reasonably commendable surgery on these women who were living and laughing only a few short seconds before but he did it in the dark and very quickly too because the patrol policeman was coming by any minute. It is obvious therefore that Jack was a very talented man with morbid courage and abundant experience with swift killing and butchery. That is obvious but these are also obvious clues to his identity because so very few people possess all of these abilities. Doyle had them all. Did I mention that this was obvious to anyone who knows Conan Doyle’s life history.

Doyle spent nine months on a whaling ship, his last year in medical school, where he was the ship’s doctor. In his biography he says he spent a lot of time killing seals and gutting there still quivering bodies and skinning them immediately. He said it was difficult at first, killing these lovable little creatures, but he got used to it and skilled at it. A handy set of traits for Jack to be able to kill women and then skillfully cut out particular organs, quickly — in the dark, with the police looking for him. There wouldn’t be many surgeons or butchers who could do that — quickly, in the dark, without getting scared and cutting their own fingers.

Jack the Ripper was a consummate doer of evil. With this post I gave away Conan Doyle’s initials plus a vowel in the title. ACONsummate DOer of evil. Who in the world could and would commit the evil acts which Jack the Ripper committed? The only possible answer is a consummate doer of evil. How can one claim otherwise? This man reveled in evil deeds and is famous for it and for making the evil of the deeds interesting to the public in his Sherlock Holmes stories and many others. In this case he was so evil that he chose women for his attacks that had done very little that was criminal or even more than slightly immoral.

Why should Jack have brought about these exotic attacks? The reasons are pretty obvious: he wanted to be famous and he was willing to take real risks to gain that fame. He wanted to gain personal fame for the murders but he didn’t want to be identified immediately or he would be hung. He wanted his personal name to be revealed long after he had died when the fame associated with his previously known public personal name might be fading. He wanted a way to revivify his name and fame—to be reborn again and again and to live on after a normal physical death. Thus later he became noted for being a spiritualist and spending much of his fortune on spreading the word about eternal life after death of the physical body.

This post is the beginning of fulfilling Doyle’s fondest wish. He wanted to commit the perfect crime, to make the crime famous and to have his personal name associated with that perfect crime and thus to expand and retain his fame. He wanted to be famous not just for a few weeks but for his entire lifetime, long beyond that and even into an after life. He wanted to reveal his name a long time after he had died a normal physical death in old age so that the getting away with murders for such a long time would enhance his reputation and fame even more. Jack the Ripper is screaming his name at YOU and I! Even though he died physically July 7, 1930 and is lying peacefully in his grave,Steel True – Blade Straight , an appropriate epitaph for Jack The Ripper, engraved in stone over his body. He wanted you to know who he was and to revere him even more than you already do. He left a trail of crimes and hoaxes which will not be discovered for centuries if ever. They lie waiting to be discovered by those sleuths who can untangle the skein of clues he left. I found one hoax but left it buried in the California hills. Why not? Until the funny little games are revealed there would be true believers claiming it was a great, history changing, find.

Why can’t people trust their own senses? One of the strangest phenomena I have observed about human beings, at least the ones I know personally, is their inability to trust the observations of their own senses. That quality becomes very apparent when I discuss something so obvious as the various clues in the series of crimes labeled, “Jack the Ripper”. The fact is that the perpetrator of those crimes signed them with his own personal name and it can be readily seen by anyone who knows that person’s name and yet when ordinary people see the name they will quickly say, it isn’t there. That I am imagining it, and when I point it out, even though they see it and they will say that I am projecting my preconceived thoughts onto this 121 year old piece of paper. Oh, yes they will say, it is there but that is just a strange coincidence and it doesn’t really mean anything. Yes it is there repeatedly but if you look around you can find any person’s name on the document, if you look hard enough. Perhaps that is true, but I say, this isn’t just a random picking out of letters helter-skelter from around the document. No, it is picking out the most famous words in the document and the very first and last words. It is like picking out the most famous word in a famous novel of the time, say, Dracula and then saying that that exact word is the clue word to who wrote that book, (it is generally acknowledged by Bram Stoker authorities that he didn’t write it) that that word is the unknown person’s personal public name known to everyone. Shortly after the Jack the Ripper murders there was a famous fictional killer who lived in exactly the same address location as the most famous Ripper victim, Mary Kelly, and his name was Dracula. It’s like suggesting that Dracula was the murderer of Mary Kelly.

Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Jack the Ripper and Vincent Van Gogh What a famous bunch of cut-ups all doing pretty much the same thing at the same time. Here it is some 121 years later and those folks are still famous for their sharp “wits”. Van Gogh once used his upon himself and cut off his left ear and gave it to a hard-working girlfriend Rachel for a Christmas present. Now that’s a weird gift to find under your Christmas tree! Sherlock Holmes, a fictional character like Dracula, seems unrelated until you notice that the very first word of this entire canon of sixty stories is pictured in the word Rache which is linked early in the story by the not too bright police detective to the word Rachel. The first edition of the book Study in Scarlet was in the bookstores at the same time these other events were in play. There was another famous cut up at the time, John Doyle Lee who was executed for slashing the throat of a girl named Rachel at Mountain Meadows, Utah, the site where Drebber gets his start. The blood on the wall forming the word Rache was taken from the slashed throat of the victim, Enoch (James) Drebber (Having read this far, you should now be suspicious of I am es D Repper) — Jack the Ripper was slashing throats for his Rache! at the same time. And so was Vincent for his Rachel and John Doyle Lee and of course Dracula had a well known interest in women’s bloody throats.

“Jack the Ripper left no clues”?! Ha! Ha! What a joke !!! Here it is 121 years after the Jack the Ripper events in London’s Whitechapel district and millions of man-hours have been wasted in searching for him and still the authorities claim they have no clues. The simple truth is that the murder left an absolute blizzard of clues and these millions of sleuths have been too dull-witted to see what is placed before their eyes, in plain sight. It’s rather similar to The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe. Will they be annoyed with me for spoiling their fun? Ha Ha

Now you know how to spot the tell-tale clues. You know my methods, now apply them. Apply them to the prime suspects of the Jack the Ripper murders who themselves had mysterious deaths. Doyle liked to follow the rules and keep things in proper balance.

Jack the Ripper was A Conan Doyle ~ !
[update: 2012/03/15 – Another similar set of proofs implicating Sir Conan Doyle in the creation of the now recognized as fake, Francis Drake’s Plate of Brass. The foundation document of the British Empire.]

On March 8 2009 I posted, The fake Drake Plate was created by Conan Doyle and mentioned I would give some reasons for my asserting that claim. I don’t want to make it too easy for you so I will merely tell you what the clues are and see if you or anyone else can discover them. Let me warn you that since that date I have given a good quality printout of the Plate of Brass to several people with the clues on them and they did not agree with me that they were clues. So if would be a good idea for you to do a little experiment, which will help you to understand just how difficult it is for what is suggested is more than random chance.

Try and find your personal name written into the plate! You can do it any way you choose and if you can find your personal name please let me know and I will post it. Surely out of 6.8 billion people there will be a huge number who can find their name. Let me say that if your name is Doyle it will be easy. If you choose to do a crossword puzzle style search let me suggest you scan first for the most unusual letter in your name because it will save you some time. For example, the most unusual letter in Doyle’s name is the y because it infrequently used in normal writing. After you find your most unusual letter look around that letter for an adjacent letter which is adjacent to your name in the already found letter. My experience with this method was that it was easy to find a couple of examples of the most unusual letter but not so easy to find one right beside it which was adjacent to it in the sought for name and that a third letter was very unusual.

After playing that silly little game for a few minutes with your first, middle and last name try it with Sir Conan Doyle and see what you come up with. In that case here are 13 letters in a continuous wiggly string. This string of letters is single clue alone but there are lots more clues. Think of the possibilities of word games being played by a man world famous for playing mysterious games, especially word games and letter games. Remember the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Dancing Men.

After you have worked your mind on that funny little game, try and discover Conan Doyle’s name in the very top line of the text. Doyle always puts his name at the very top of his works, it is like he said “you are nothing until you have your name on the spine of a book” or at the most prominent place on an infamous hoax. This particular clue isn’t just with the letters so say out loud that top line several times. Say it fast, say it slow and with different rhythms. You will soon hear what I hear. After you do hear, then consider what the word men means to a knighted Englishman.

Next, you might consider the strange CC at the bottom of the plate. It has befuddled scholars for some 70 years. You may know from your high school French that d’oile (Doyle) means of the eye, to see. Also, that in plain old English con means not only to cheat but also to look and to see, as on the con of a ship or the conning tower of an airport.

That is enough of a brain strain for a while but assuming you are willing to work through those clues and realize just how idiosyncratic they truly are you will be on your way along one of the most exciting Adventures Sir Conan Doyle ever created. I don’t want to spoil your fun but just to point the way and assure you there is an interesting path to be beaten. AWAKE! IRREGULARS! Being a prolific man Doyle did a lot of whatever he did and he did a lot of things including hoaxes.

X-ray of Drake's Plate of Brass from MIT

The original plate was on display for a half a century as the prize possession of the Bancroft Library in Berkeley but it is no longer on display at the library because it is a proven fake. It is now hidden in deep storage in their basement vault. I would like to see it restored to its former place of—most valued document!

During January 15-20, 1989, when the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) held its Annual Meeting here in San Francisco, I presented a poster session paper accusing Arthur Conan Doyle of creating the Drake Plate, the Kensington Runestone and the Piltdown Man, all of which were considered by some people even at that time to be hoaxes. I gave a copy of that paper to the Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California, and discussed it briefly with the director of the library at that time, James D. Hart. Since then I have worked intermittently on the problem of Conan Doyle’s hoaxes and have found quite a few, some of which are still considered legitimate historical items. Below is the published pre-abstract of a 15 minute lecture presented to the 71st Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division of the AAAS.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Exposed as a Scientific Hoaxer

CHARLES SCAMAHORN

An analysis of hoaxing by the great author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is presented which gives several examples of his “work” and a general strategy for identifying his hoaxes, some of which may as yet be undiscovered. Examples of exposed hoaxes to be discussed are: 1. “The Piltdown Man” hoax of 1909, in which several pieces of bone were cleverly sculpted and stained to mimic what was being sought for as the “missing link.” 2. “The Drake Plate” hoax in which a small “plate of brass” was made to simulate the one documented to have been left by Francis Drake in 1579. The plate, found on a hilltop overlooking the San Francisco Bay in 1936, fitted the description of the sought-for object quite well but recent metallurgical evidence proves it to be a modern fake. 3. The “Kensington Stone” found in 1898 in Minnesota with an inscription dating it at 1362. This stone, though chiseled with plausible Runic characters, was rejected by most of the scientific community. However, each of these hoaxes was sufficiently skillful that it attracted some sustained scientific support. This paper discusses the common features which link these hoaxes to Doyle. This discovery adds a new dimension to the complex personality of the famed creator of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Being a prolific man in his public life, Doyle was probably also prolific in his hidden life and we should be on the lookout for more of his hoaxes.

Many of Conan Doyle’s hoaxes will have the code letters HB, derived from his grandfather John Doyle’s secret nom-de-plume HB, embedded in them. In the case of the Drake plate Doyle managed to place the hoax object on a preplanned geographic HB line and to get it searched for by an authoritative historical person with the initials (HB), Herbert Bolton. Furthermore after the Drake Plate is found and given to Bolton it was publicly displayed prominently for some 60 years in the foyer of the (HB) Herbert Bancroft library which is also precisely on the HB line. That line stretches from (HB) Home Bay, California, through Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes’s evil twin), New Mexico and beyond.

Herbert Bolton doing his Sherlock Holmes impersonation.

Here is Professor James D. Hart with the Herbert Bancroft library’s 1632 AD copy of Shakespeare’s first folio which I wanted them to open to the page of the play King John Act IV Scene i (lines with eyes 1595, 1609, 1612, 1632, 1639, 1646, 1650, 1669, 1677, 1680, 1694, 1719, 1884, 1917, 1990, 2111) where the young prince Arthur Conan is about to have his eyes (Doyle’s in french) poked out by (HB) Hubert de Burgh. and Scene iii (1995-206) where Arthur dies. However, when I said my reason to look at this valuable book was to verify if it had been modified by Doyle they didn’t seem to think that was a valid enough reason and so since that moment the possibility that it has been hoaxed remains a closed book to me. I haven’t been back to the Bancroft, for years, until yesterday. I did attended Professor Hart’s memorial service in 1990 where his son in law told a funny story about the Drake Plate and Professor Hart’s relationship to it. I had the privilege of talking to Professor Hart several times, found him to be a warm and wonderful person and it is sad that Doyle chose to tarnish his and Herbert Bolton’s work and the Hubert Bancroft Library with such a cruel hoax.
Friday I attended a group tour given by the current director of the newly refurbished and just opened Bancroft Library.

The new premises are not fully opened and when we passed the cabinet where the original gold nugget, the one that started the California Gold Rush of 1849, is to be placed he paused and talked about it for a moment. I asked where the Drake Plate was going to be placed. He said it was in the basement and that it would probably stay there. Someone else asked what the Drake Plate was and Faulhaber gave a several minute explanation of how it was a hoax perpetrated by E Clampus Vitus. I shook my head so disapprovingly that someone asked what the matter was and I gave the one minute speech on how it was done by Conan Doyle. At the end of the tour I asked Director Faulhaber if he would be interested in my giving a talk about the Drake Plate to the Friends of the Bancroft. His response was that it was a hoax and he didn’t want anything more to do with it and that it should be forgotten. I asked if it would be okay if I published what I know about the hoax to which he gave a shrug and implied that it was a free country.

The plate itself has many clues linking it back to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Have some fun looking for them. I will come back in a while and show some of them. Observe word games!